


Ionic, Doric, Corinthian, Agony

by psychomachia



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomachia/pseuds/psychomachia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someday, Ares and Aphrodite will stop sleeping together. It just won't be today.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ionic, Doric, Corinthian, Agony

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to Robert Graves' "The Greek Myths" and the Yayhoos' "Baby, I Love You", both of whom gave me much needed material for the story.

**Praxis**

 _Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns..._

Wait. That's not how this story begins.

 _There once was a man from Nantucket..._

Closer in spirit but not quite there yet.

 _Once upon a time there was a man and a woman, who were actually Greek gods and who should have known far better than to sleep together, but genetic stupidity, overactive hormones, and that little thing called destiny kept drawing them together even though the woman was unhappily married to a man with ready access to red hot metal and her lover was too busy killing people in glorious, gory ways to really give their relationship the proper attention it deserved._

That's about right. It's not Homer, but it'll do.

And even though there were numerous strikes against their relationship, such as infidelity, incest, and interfering relations, they nonetheless stayed relatively devoted to each other through horrifically stupid wars, random love affairs and triangles, family squabbles, and the whole fall of the gods into oblivion.

They didn't live happily ever after.

However, they did have amazingly great sex.

In the end, isn't that what good relationships are all about?

 **Anadyomene**

Depending on how you look at it, they weren't precisely meant for each other.

He was born to Zeus and Hera, who pretty much hated him from the moment he was born. Well, the scholars don't have exact dates on when his parents started loathing him and wishing he would just get run over by a chariot, but the fact of the matter is, almost no one in the family liked him except for his uncle, Hades, who just liked the fact that his nephew kept him well supplied with bodies.

And Aphrodite, who was family too, either his half-sister or great-aunt, depending on how you look at the genealogy.

One story is that she was born out of Zeus and Dione, making her Ares' half-sister and well-within traditional Greek mythical family values. This is, sadly, the more normal and therefore, less likely version of her birth.

The other story is that she was born out of her father's discarded genitals when Cronus chopped them off and threw them into the sea before hooking up with his sister and producing Zeus who would turn right around and get rid of his father, and then hook up with his own sister.

Moral of this story: Keep it in the family.

Alternatively: sleeping with your sister is good for a while, but will probably screw you over in the end.

Finally: when your father is as dysfunctional as Ares' was, sleeping with your great-great-aunt is nothing special.

 **Pandemos**

They didn't meet in cute "boy meets girl and falls head over heels in love fashion before they frolic together in a sunlit field." For one thing, Ares' fields tended to be less filled with flowers and sunshine, and more filled with corpses and men about to become corpses. Blood is slippery after all, and running would only get you a foot in someone's stomach.

Instead, they met at a family dinner, one of those atrociously uncomfortable affairs where half the people at the table are on the brink of using one of their dinner knives and jabbing it into their nearest and dearest for secret, but clearly important reasons, and the other half are just praying to get through without too much bloodshed.

On this particular night, Ares had bet his uncle good odds on missing body limbs and intended to collect, even if he had to do the chopping himself.

Then he caught her eye (or rather she caught his) and everything he had planned that night went out the window.

He had seen her around before - it's hard to miss the most gorgeous woman you've ever seen in your life, even if you suspect she's out of your league and old enough to be your grandmother (or great-grandmother, he had heard about the family tree too and it was worrisome, though not enough to keep him from staring at her breasts). Ares was only a boy by Olympian standards, after all, and it wasn't too hard to convince him that there might be far more interesting things in his future than another glass of wine and several arguments over the nobility of war.

As for Aphrodite, she was drunk and bored, and hey, it was him or Hermes, and she wasn't quite plastered enough for that yet.

So he was smitten and she was intrigued and just like that, they were making plans to hook up right after Hera stopped trying to beat Zeus to death with his own chair.

 **Epitragidia**

It should have been horrible since Ares was aggressive and violent and prone to leaving his partners yelling obscenities at him as they stumbled out of his bed, and Aphrodite's standards could be rather high, given the fact that she was the patron of the act in question.

It should have been awkward, because no matter how many times either one of them had done it, it was the first time for both of them to do it with each other and there were so many things they didn't know about each other. It's always a problem when you realize one partner definitely doesn't want your tongue going there, there's nothing to do but put on your clothes and avoid making eye contact.

It should have been the textbook case of bad decisions and poor hook-ups. It should have been in one of those magazine articles with the headline "Did you make a mistake? Ten reasons to regret the night before."

It wasn't any of these things and that's where everything goes truly wrong.

 **Hetaira**

It should have been just a one-night stand. Neither one of them was known for commitment and given the family history, it wasn't surprising if they preferred to stay clear of marriage or anything remotely close to it.

It wasn't for one night only. It wasn't even for a week or a month or even a decade or so. It started and it didn't really stop. At some point, they forgot when it had began and it was as if it had always been that way. They were together and they couldn't remember when they hadn't been.

They saw each other in the day on battlefields, in temples, and in Olympus above, where they hid from Hera, who could be an obstacle when it came to premarital sex.

They saw each other at night anywhere they wanted to, any way they wanted to.

They could have stopped it anytime they wanted to. They should have stopped it. He didn't really need more reasons for his family to loathe him, and she wasn't in a strong enough position to challenge the family on anything.

Then it got even worse.

 **Despina**

The Greek Gods were known for many things. They were known for bravery, for honor, for beauty, for strength, for prowess in battle, for creation, for destruction, and for a host of other heroic qualities.

No one ever said they were known for common sense.

Zeus, as well as being the king of the gods, was the king of monumentally stupid decisions that may have seemed like a good idea at the time to anyone who didn't think ahead five seconds or so.

For example, one can suppose that he was correct in assuming that having a really hot relative such as Aphrodite might promote strife in the family, given the family's tendencies towards in-fighting and incest. And it was understandable that he would seek to control her by marrying her off to someone he thought could manage her.

Nowhere in any of this thinking is it clear why anyone would think Hephaestus would be the best choice. Yes, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that someone who is known for her love of physical beauty should be forever faithful to a man who was known for his lack of it. Aphrodite was many things, including being a hell of a lot smarter than she was given credit for by the rest of Olympus, but nowhere in her description were the words "selfless," "compassionate," or "able to see the beauty deep within someone."

For that matter, one has to wonder just what Zeus thought marriage would accomplish, given his own record on the issue and his own wife's recalcitrance.

Given all these factors, it's not surprising therefore, that Aphrodite, upon her marriage, decided that adultery was the preferable option to fidelity and hopped promptly back into Ares' bed.

The sex got even better.

 **Kallipygos**

Every couple has something memorable that defines them as a couple that says this is who we are and how we love. For some, it's how they met - a Ferris wheel, a crowded subway, or a glance across an infinite space that lasts only for a second but is enough to connect. Others define themselves by events that occur later in their courtship, such as a romantic anniversary or a third date that ended with a kiss and a promise of something more. At least, the Hallmark cards and diamond commercials say so, and who are we to doubt them?

Some couples are less fortunate, having moments defined by embarrassment, by violence, by any number of things that make the police reports, but not the family album.

In any case, the memory is such that it can spread to their friends and family, becoming the toast at a reception, the inside joke at a cocktail party, the story told to grandchildren decades later.

The important thing to remember here is that a couple rarely chooses what they would be known for - it just happens.

Sometimes it's a tale of a first kiss in a lush garden, while birds sing, the sun shines down, and all is filled with happiness, joy, and possibly singing woodland creatures.

And sometimes it's a couple trapped naked in a bed under a net made by a woman's jealous husband while the male half of the family watches and alternately mocks and makes suggestive offers.

However, some memories are wrong, and some stories are twisted, and this isn't quite the way it actually happened.

Three truths to remember:

Despite what everyone says, the goddesses didn't stay behind because they were modest or ashamed or thought that it wasn't their place to see their fellow gods caught in flagrante delicto. They just thought it was stupid and if they wanted to see someone naked and tied down, they would just go to one of those red-light temples.

Nobody in the triangle won. Not Hephaestus, broken-hearted and bitter, who once again caved after pressure from his dad and let his wife come home rather than letting his uncle sleep with her. Not Ares, who had to put up with jokes on the battlefield for centuries to come and his lover freezing him out of the bed for a good while. Not Aphrodite, who got some serious chain-link burns and a distinct impression that all male gods truly, truly sucked.

They knew there was a net there. How could they not? They weren't that stupid. It's just that it was their anniversary and both of them thought the other one was planning a very romantic surprise for the other. Nothing says "Thanks for all the great times" like some unexpected bondage.  
After all the tears and the reprisals, the threats of revenge, the bribes, the shouting, the bloodshed, and the nudity, they still didn't stop being together.

 **Pandemos**

Everyone had an opinion on the relationship.

His parents disliked it and would have spent more energy towards thwarting the two of them (or at least Ares, since they would have let the Titans sit down to tea before they would have wanted him to be happy), but Zeus was too busy appearing as random waterfowl to sleep with attractive farmers and avoiding Hera, who was trying to catch him sleeping with said random farmers.

Hephaestus, clearly, had some personal feelings on the matter, but after the disastrous net incident, he kept his hatred to himself and preferred to make high-quality weaponry and jewelry in the hopes that either he'd find a way to kill Ares with the former, or win Aphrodite's heart with the latter.

The rest of the Olympians divided themselves between pretending to be above the situation and being jealous of Ares' good fortune. In the end, most of them ignored it, preferring to concentrate on their own affairs and leaving whatever it was the two of them were doing to fate, or as it were, the Fates. Even they didn't want to get involved.

Thus, it went on, as certain as a thread of Lachesis.

 **Porne**

The sex was still great.

They kissed in the middle of Troy. They hit it in Cythera and Thebes. They slept together on a warship in the Mediterranean Sea. They fucked on a field in Cyprus. They desecrated a temple in Athens. They made love in Macedonia.

Whatever you want to call it, they did it.

They did everything they could think of. They tried everything mortals had thought of. They even experimented with stuff their family did, though the less said about that unfortunate misunderstanding with a random swan, Ares' libido, and a misunderstanding over Aphrodite's current form, the better. They had no fear, no boundaries, and no restraints (except for the ones they stole from Hephaestus' workshop).

Well, perhaps they had one limitation. They could not be faithful.

There were affairs with mortals, with demigods, with fellow Olympians. None of it really meant anything, however. There could be hurt feelings, but the bond was too strong for any random fling to make an impact.

Until Adonis.

Aphrodite never forgave Ares for that.

He never forgave her either.

 **Anosia**

Sometimes, no matter what you do, no matter how many kinks you experiment with, how many places you do it in, how many times you fight and make up and fight about your make up, it's not enough.

It was his fault. He should have paid more attention to her and less to lopping people's heads off on the battlefield. He should have been less jealous. He should have never killed Adonis.

It was her fault. She should have made him realize that no matter how many lovers she took, he would always come back to her. She should have stood up for him more. She should have never made him think she would forgive him one day.

It was their fault. They should have ended it after she got married. They should have only had one night. They should have never exchanged glances.

Now, all that remained was to divide the children (Fear and Dread to Ares; Eros, Lust, and Unrequited Love to Aphrodite, joint custody of Harmony) and fade out of recorded lore so that their ending fades into the haze of forgotten myth.

Centuries later, they watch the world they knew crumble into the dust of abandoned gods and forsaken worship.

Humanity goes on. Many gods do not.

 **Epitymbidia**

 _Fade in._

 _A couple on the edge of a cliff, hair whipping in the wind. Behind them, a motorcycle gleams. Off in the distance, you can hear the distant wail of sirens._

 _The boy sneers as he fishes out a cigarette from a pack and lights it contemptuously. Everything he does is in contempt of society. Even his leather jacket screams, "I hate you and your conformist ways and I intend to take you all down in a sea of blood, guts, and glory." It's a long message for a piece of clothing, but he's been working on it for a while._

 _The girl, meanwhile, opens up her purse and pulls out a lipstick. She swathes her lips in a red that's so suggestive five nearby school districts have banned it from being worn anywhere on their premises. It's naturally a best seller._

 _The ocean crashes below them, as he puts an arm around her waist. They stare at the sharp rocks at the bottom. It's risky, symbolic, and damn if it doesn't turn the both of them on even more._

 _He gives her a cocky smile. "Sorry about the ride. Wish it could have been smoother for you."_

 _She smiles back, lips like blood. "I wouldn't have wanted it anything but rough."_

 _The sirens get closer. She begins to shiver and he takes his jacket off, putting it around her shoulders. "Looks like this it. Are you sure you want to do this?"_

 _She looks steadily at him. "I don't want to be forgotten. I want to be famous."_

 _"Baby," he says, clutching her to his side. "We're going to be legends."_

 _They kiss fiercely. Then take a step forward. ._

 _Freeze frame. Cut to black. Nothing but darkness for several minutes._

Then we zoom back, beyond the bodies that may be living, may be dead, may someday be remembered, or may fade away into obscurity, and the sirens that may catch them or may arrive on nothing but dust. Move further back and we are in a diner across the road as a couple sits in a booth.

The man is scowling out the window as he sees the flashing lights across the distance. "Fucking kids," he says as he turns to look at the spectacle outside. He's brutish, attractive and scarred, with a glare for anyone who passes by the table.

The woman smiles at him. "You used to be that young." Her hands, slim and perfect in the sunlight, flash a diamond ring that's equally as perfect. "At least they're trying."

He snorts. "Not very well. I could do better with my hands tied behind my back."

"As I recall, you have."

The glance they exchange this time is not one of promise and the hope of something new and exciting, but one of familiarity. It is the look of a couple that has been through everything and done everything wonderful and horrible to each other and still decides to stick it out a few more years.

The couple gets up from the table, his arm around her waist.

On the way out, he knocks over a chair, just because. A waiter scowls at him, but is immediately mollified by the dazzling smile the woman strikes at him. Another waiter thinks the smile is for him and the two get into a fistfight,

Outside, the couple smiles at the sounds of jealousy, anger, and destruction they leave in their wake.

If you asked them how they hooked up, they'll tell you they don't remember a time when they weren't. They've always been a couple. No matter where they go, what they do, who they fuck, they're together.

They could try to stop, but they don't want to. They'll never really want to.

After all, the sex is still amazing.


End file.
